A Level Playing Field?

When I was young, I was raised in a household with three kids and no father. World War II took a toll on my father, so it was hard to settle into normalcy after two years of combat. Times got tough in our house. My mother was a 1940s bobby soxer with a high school education. She was an amazing woman, but she did not have much of a skillset to leave the house, have a career and support three children. We were not a latchkey family. It was a different time. Mom was gonna be home no matter what.

Money got tight. That wasn’t the same situation for all my friends. Most of them had two-parent households. Dad worked and Mom stayed home. (I realize things have changed – I don’t know if for the better.)

The places my friends’ families shopped for clothes, Christmas gifts, basic needs, etc., were different from where my mother had to shop. They would go to a store called Plaza Bootery, and that was the big time. They had the best of everything: Jack Purcell, Converse and Keds (pre-Nike and Adidas era). In the ”less desirable” part of town, we had a place called John’s Bargain Store. As a family, we knew John’s Bargain Store was NOT Plaza Bootery. We knew the difference. All the sneakers were in a huge metal basket, tied together, no boxes. Probably from Japan at the time. In four to six weeks, the sneakers would provide you with their own musical content. The yellow rubber gum soles usually let loose after the fifth or sixth stickball game.

There would be a vroomp – that was the sole trying to catch you as you rounded second base, which was usually a bag or a cardboard box in the street. John’s was never sold to us as a premier store. It was basically the dollar store equivalent of today. We knew what it was.

Right now, we have large MSOs coming at us, and that leads me to ask a simple question: Are they the John’s Bargain Store of the body shop industry? Are we REALLY on a level playing field? I have all of the “good stuff” in my shop that makes me Plaza Bootery, but I’m somehow competing with a steel basket full of sneakers. Will the gum soles fall off at John’s Bargain Store? This is not a pair of sneakers we’re talking about. These are the second largest investments in every household.

They’re trying to sell themselves as Plaza Bootery, but they’re not. Am I competing with John’s Bargain Store? These MSOs are large organizations. They can absorb any hit, expensive re-dos sent to other businesses, etc., because it’s all about margins. Maybe they’ll just play the odds.

Twenty years ago, I watched a 60 Minutes program with Mike Wallace. They interviewed the engineers from General Motors. For some reason, people were being ejected from vehicles when they were broadsided or t-boned. The families swore that their father or mother or child never got in a vehicle without a seatbelt, so the question was, how could they be ejected? It turned out that the seatbelts were faulty. The engineer, who was now retired, sobbed on live TV that he was told to put a screw through the seat belt buckle, knowing they were faulty. It would seem that when the person hit the seatbelt, the seatbelt would open up and the driver would be ejected from the vehicle. The reason they continued that abhorrent behavior was because there were millions of premanufactured seatbelts. And they played the odds.

Is John’s Bargain Store playing the odds? Is the industry playing Russian Roulette?

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Flemington Volkswagen

213 Route 202/31 Flemington, NJ 08822 TOLL FREE: 877-657-2787 FAX: 908-782-1795 email: rmuir@flemington.com www.NJPARTS.com

Paul Miller VW of Bernardsville

118 Morristown ROAd Bernardsville, NJ 07924 Toll Free: 877-318-6557 Local: 908-766-1600 Fax: 908-766-6171

Douglas Motors

491 MORRIS AVE. SUMMIT, NJ 07901 PHONE: 908-277-1100 FAX: 908-273-6196 TOLL FREE: 800-672-1172 www.douglasvw.com email: douglasparts@douglasautonet.com

Trend Motors

221 Route 46 West Rockaway, NJ 07866 888-267-2821 fax: 973-625-4985 www.trendmotors.com email: dreinacher@trendmotors.com

Crestmont Volkswagen

730 ROUTE 23 NORTH POMPTON PLAINS, NJ 07444 TOLL FREE: 800-839-6444 fax: 973-839-8146 www.crestmontvw.com email: vwparts@crestmont23.com

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